There are times when we wish the news given to us was fake, but, sadly, today’s blockbuster from the Washington Post is not.

I speak – duh – of today’s revelation that more than 16 million Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows (presumably jerseys and brown swiss, not that Americans would know what either of those are).

The Post’s Wonkblog has crunched the numbers according to the online survey by the National Dairy Council, while not pointing out that online surveys are notoriously not scientific.

But it’s a believable statistic based on other surveys — scientific ones — asking Americans questions about their food.

One Department of Agriculture study, commissioned in the early ‘90s, found that nearly one in five adults did not know that hamburgers are made from beef. Many more lacked familiarity with basic farming facts, like how big U.S. farms typically are and what food animals eat.

“At the end of the day, it’s an exposure issue,” said Cecily Upton, co-founder of the nonprofit FoodCorps, which brings agricultural and nutrition education into elementary schools. “Right now, we’re conditioned to think that if you need food, you go to the store. Nothing in our educational framework teaches kids where food comes from before that point.”

About the blogger

Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts. He was senior editor of news in the ’90s, ran MPR’s political unit, created the MPR News regional website, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day laments that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.

NewsCut is a blog featuring observations about the news. It provides a forum for an online discussion and debate about events that might not typically make the front page. NewsCut posts are not news stories.